Linux Format forums

[zarathustra]

Okay this one isn't so straight forward.

I moved to SATA drives on my new desktop because they offered a reasonable speed with much increased capacity, more fool me, ONLY Fedora Core 4 Test 2 can find the SATA controller, not SuSE, Mandrake, Kubuntu etc. Now I do use FC4/2 but I'm a little miffed as it requires my boot partition and thus kernel to be stored on USB stick as the SATA is a loadable module. Why the *expletive* can't linus roll it into the kernel, come to think of it why is firewire still a loadable module on fedora?

It's all well and good supporting the processor, though see my note on Debian *grrr* but with the processor comes new technology which requires simultanious support.

regards Zara... got another grumble so changing to different board!

[nelz]

It's not down to Linus. Each distro makes its own choices as regards compiling the kernel. They choose what is compiled into the kernel and what is compiled as a module.

In your case it would make no difference whether the driver was compiled into the kernel if you can't even load the kernel itself off the SATA drive.
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Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

[zarathustra]

Granted you have a point, but I'm sure if SATA was ready it would and should be in the main kernel, period, I do think it's ready as the modules I have are great if only I could boot from the devices they are intended to run!. Also I don't think that it is entirely down to Vendors, arguably it's probably 99% vendors, such is why Fedora have *still* not included Firewire, yes I could take it up with them, but hey all I get in response is "it's free, there is no charge for the software, it's unfortunate but tough!"

Oh and that remaining 1%, well Linus could force it upon the vendors by 'putting' it in the main kernel! That's the point I really wanted to make.

regards zara... *who also happens to be in a better mood*

[fingers99]

[nelz]

SATA support is in the main kernel source tree. It is up to each kernel compiler to decide which modules should be compiled into the kernel and which should be modules. Linus has no control over this.

I use SATA on my desktop but not my laptop, so my desktop's kernel has SATA compiled in, whereas the laptop doesn't even have it as a module. Those were my decisions, I didn't need to ask Linus
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Unix is user-friendly. It's just very selective about who it's friends are.

[nordle]

Slackware has had a SATA kernel on its distro for ages, not sure if it covers your controller as you'd have to check these options against the source.

CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_AHCI=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SVW=y
CONFIG_SCSI_ATA_PIIX=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_NV=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_PROMISE=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SX4=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SIL=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_SIS=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_ULI=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_VIA=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_VITESSE=y
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I think, therefore I compile

[zarathustra]

Thanks Nordle, I am using the SATA_SIL and it works fine enough, but...

I realise now with previous comments that it's the vendors at fault. Accordingly Fedora has been binned, which is a shame as I like it *shrug* I really don't see why someone would in this day and age include support for say the old quick tape drives, you know the floppy bus ones and not SATA, just one example.

Anyways this matter was posted for discussion and I thank you all for leading me a little further in understanding.

I downloaded the latest Slackware last night and am burning the discs as I type this so *fingers crossed* I'll be happy.

Regards Zara

[Nigel]

I have SATA on my machine; SuSE 9.2 recognised it, installed to it & boots with no problems at all (at least no SATA-related problems; the power management on my mobo doesn't play nicely with SuSE so I have to disable it with boot params)
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Hope this helps,

Nigel.